Yosemite: Spring Solo Road Trip – Part I

With my typical work schedule it’s very rare that I get two consecutive days off. So when one week I miraculously found myself with THREE whole days off IN A ROW I leaped at the chance to see this nation park for the first time. Thus commenced my Yosemite Spring Solo Road Trip 2015 Tuolumne Ho! The trip was fairly last minute, and early enough in the Spring that I was able to book an Air BnB nearby for the first night, and a campsite just outside the south entrance for the second night (which I LOVED). I got a list of not-to-miss recommendations from some of my coworkers the day before I left, and then hit the road early the following morning.

My first stop was the Oakdale Cheese Factory. There’s a Gouda factory in Northern California! All every kind of Gouda from Jalapeño, to Cardamon (delicious!), to aged. The fixings I picked up there, as well as some road-side strawberries, kept me going for the next few days. Plus, they had goats, and who can resist that…

After my charcuterie lunch, I continued on the road, pulling over at the occasional turn out or scenic overlook. Being on the road made some of the hardships in the state of California strikingly clear: the drought, and the wildfires. There’s some kind of tragic beauty in both… My next big stop was in an adorable little town called Groveland (you can’t make this stuff up!) just west of Stanislaus National Forest.

Phew! And I finally officially made it to Yosemite in the late afternoon! My first stop in Yosemite was Tuolumne Meadows. You have to wide East through the mountains to get there, and as I was climbing, the mist and clouds rolled in and gave me quite the breathtaking show. I was glad of my extra layers with the temperature dropping into the low 40’s that high up. It was still raining by the time I made it to the meadows, but there was blue sky teasing me off in distance.

Holy moly is it stunning at Tuolumne. I went for a quick hike before the sunset… only to realize that somehow my one-and-only SD card was completely corrupt and refused to store any more photos! Argh! I never travel without a spare, either, but I figured one 64GB card would hold me over for the weekend. Lesson learned. This was the only shot I managed to keep from Tuolumne, but I did have my phone on me at the time, and snapped a few shots on that.